I Died 2,000 Years Ago: The Underworld Fears Me-Chapter 80 - 77 — We Brought Cash Instead of an Army
The air inside the Last Stop Factory tasted of scorched copper and cooling weapon oil.
Five hundred Iron-Husked Myrmidons stood in perfect, terrifying formation across the cracked concrete floor. No breathing. No shifting weight. No nervous twitches. Just rigid rows of matte-black iron waiting in the dark for a command that would send them to slaughter.
In the center of this mechanical graveyard, Jian was having a meltdown.
Squeak. Squeak. SNAP.
Jian broke his third piece of chalk against a rusted whiteboard he had dragged out of the manager’s office. He wiped sweat from his forehead, leaving a thick streak of white dust across his pale skin.
"Okay!" Jian yelled, gesturing wildly at a crude map drawn in jagged, frantic lines. "If we breach the acid rivers at zero-four-hundred hours, we can outflank the Flesh Exchange’s outer guard! Lingshan takes the vanguard. Dr. Zhu provides aerial artillery. And I will... I will barricade myself in the office, lock the steel doors, and manage the Wi-Fi!"
Above him, Dr. Zhu floated near the corrugated tin ceiling. The spectral engineer had a stolen Consortium plasma cannon levitating between his translucent hands. He was currently trying to bolt the heavy artillery directly onto Red Dog’s left shoulder plate.
The seven-foot iron giant simply stood there, staring straight ahead, utterly indifferent to the blue sparks showering off his armor.
I walked through the heavy factory doors.
My boots crunched over shattered glass and hardened slag.
Jian spun around, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "Boss! I mapped the assault! We take the five hundred, we punch a hole straight through their border checkpoints, and we hit the Warlord before he finishes his morning coffee!"
I didn’t slow down. I walked straight past Jian, lifted my bare hand, and wiped his chalk invasion route completely off the whiteboard.
The dry dust coated my palm. I brushed it off on my ruined suit trousers.
"Nobody is breaching anything," I said.
Jian blinked. He looked at the blank board, then at me. "But... we have an army. They have the Warlord. We need the soul fragment before the Judge cuts your head off. That equals war."
"It equals suicide," I corrected.
I turned to face him, leaning my weight against the heavy iron edge of a nearby workbench.
"Sector Nine was an internal corporate dispute. We cleaned up a local monopoly," I explained, keeping my voice perfectly level to cut through his panic. "But the Underworld runs on strict jurisdictional law. The sky has eyes, Jian. The Ivory Sky doesn’t care if Warlords slaughter each other in the gutters, but they care deeply about borders. Borders are tax lines."
Lingshan stepped out from the deep shadows near the smelting furnace. She had cleaned the black blood off her tactical armor, but her hand rested naturally on the freezing hilt of Winter’s Edge.
"The Panopticon grid," she said quietly.
"Exactly," I nodded. "Crossing a Sector border with five hundred mechanized troops isn’t a gang fight. It is legally classified as an Act of War against the upper layers. If a single Myrmidon boot touches Sector Eight soil, the automated surveillance grid flags it. Judge Mortis wouldn’t wait forty-six hours for my audit deadline to expire. He would materialize instantly. We would be executed for unauthorized warfare before we even smelled the acid rivers."
Jian swallowed hard. The remaining piece of chalk slipped from his trembling fingers and shattered on the floor. "So the army is useless?"
"The army stays here to hold our territory," I said. "If we leave Sector Nine undefended, corporate scavengers will cross the bridge and pick this factory clean by tomorrow morning."
Lingshan frowned. The tactical mind of the Sword Saint bloodline was trying to process a war without soldiers.
"Then how do we reach Baron Zhang?" she asked, her voice tight with frustration. "A Sector Lord does not take appointments from slum operators. His syndicate guards the Flesh Exchange with elite mercenaries. If we walk up to the gates alone, they will simply slaughter us for trespassing and strip our corpses for parts."
I didn’t answer immediately.
I hoisted the heavy metal briefcase I had carried from Grandma’s apartment and set it flat on the factory anvil. The thick steel of the anvil groaned under the sudden, massive density.
"We don’t need an appointment," I said.
I pressed my thumb to the biometric scanner on the handle.
Click. Hiss.
I flipped the heavy lid back.
The blinding, pure white light of one hundred million in liquid spiritual silver washed over the dark factory floor. It caught the sharp edges of Lingshan’s sword. It reflected in the dull iron chests of the Myrmidons. The air instantly smelled of clean ozone, rich and dangerously heavy.
It didn’t just smell of wealth. It radiated a crushing physical gravity. In the Underworld, capital was indistinguishable from life force. That briefcase held enough condensed karma to buy a small country or fund a century-long war.
Jian let out a strangled, pathetic whimper. He took an involuntary step toward the anvil, his hands trembling, his pupils dilated wide.
I looked at Lingshan, watching her disciplined eyes adjust to the glare of concentrated capital.
"We are bringing a hundred million in liquid assets into a district entirely dependent on stock commissions," I told her. "We aren’t an invading army, Miss Ye. We are foreign investors."
I snapped the briefcase shut.
The harsh, comforting shadows returned to the factory floor. The lock clicked with the finality of a closing vault.
"The Executive Board for this acquisition will be small," I announced.
I looked up at the ceiling. "Dr. Zhu. Stop trying to turn my vanguard into a tank. Unbolt that cannon."
Dr. Zhu grumbled, a sound like grinding gears echoing from his ghostly throat, but the heavy plasma cannon detached from the iron plating with a loud clank.
I pointed at the massive, matte-black Myrmidon. "Red Dog."
The giant’s optics flared a dull, violent crimson. He took one heavy step forward. The concrete spider-webbed under his immense weight.
"Carry the briefcase."
Red Dog stared down at the sleek, silver corporate luggage. He reached out with a hand the size of a cinderblock. Two massive, clawed iron fingers gently pinched the thin handle. He lifted it effortlessly.
The seven-foot engine of slaughter looked like a stone gargoyle holding a designer purse.
Jian choked back a hysterical laugh, covering his mouth with both hands. "He... he looks like he’s going to a very aggressive accounting seminar."
"He is the bagman," I said flatly.
Lingshan stepped up beside me. She looked down at her battered, practical tactical suit, then at the long, freezing steel of her blade.
"Should I disguise my weapon, Sovereign?" she asked, her tone entirely serious. "A wrapped blade might draw less attention from the border guards."
"No," I said, adjusting my cuffs. "Wear your sword openly. Keep your hand resting on the hilt. A CEO walking into a hostile financial district with a hundred million in cash and no visible security looks like a victim. We want to look like a threat that pays exceptionally well."
I pulled back my ruined sleeve.
Forty-six hours. Eighteen minutes.
The gears inside my chest—the new, heavy human heartbeat mixed with the ancient Sovereign rhythm—clicked into place. The overwhelming grief I had felt in Grandma’s apartment was gone, locked away in a cold, iron box at the back of my mind. All that remained was the Ledger, and the Warlord whose name was written in red ink.
"Open the doors," I ordered.
The heavy iron gears of the factory shrieked in protest. The massive loading doors rolled upward, grinding against rusted tracks.
The damp, smog-choked air of Sector Nine rolled in, smelling of wet garbage and rust.
Jian stood by the anvil, clutching his chest with one hand and waving with the other. "I’ll manage the ledgers from here! If your life signs flatline on the terminal, I’m liquidating the furniture and moving to the coast!"
"Just don’t sell my chair," I said.
I opened my black umbrella.
Lingshan took the left flank, her boots silent on the concrete. Red Dog took the right, the silver briefcase swinging gently from his massive claws, his heavy steps shaking the ground.
We walked out into the rain.
The descent into Sector Eight was not a gradual shift. It was a violent collision of environments.
We left the rusting tenements and weeping concrete of Sector Nine behind. The ground angled sharply downward, leading us into a massive subterranean trench that spanned miles across.
The temperature spiked within minutes. The damp, clinging chill of the slums burned away, replaced by a sweltering, suffocating heat that immediately began to bake the moisture out of my throat.
I collapsed my umbrella. The rain didn’t fall down here. It evaporated before it could hit the ground.
The sky above this sector wasn’t the usual depressing grey. It was the color of a bruised, infected lung—a sickly, pulsing purple illuminated from below by massive industrial exhaust vents roaring out of the earth.
We walked along a high, narrow ridge of black volcanic stone. Below us, cutting through the absolute center of the sector, was the river.
It wasn’t water.
It was boiling, neon-green acid thick with dissolved bone and industrial waste. The current moved sluggishly, churning against the rocky banks and sending thick plumes of toxic, sulfur-scented steam into the hot air. It hissed against the stone like wet meat thrown onto a skillet.
Along the shores, thousands of chained, translucent souls worked massive blast furnaces. Their spectral bodies warped and flickered in the intense heat, bound to the machinery by heavy iron collars.
The air tasted like a struck match. The heat baked the dried blood directly into the wool of my suit.
"Sovereign," Lingshan warned, her voice tight. She stopped walking and pointed straight ahead through the thick, yellow smog.
I looked.
Rising out of the toxic haze, completely dwarfing the factories and the acid river below, was the Flesh Exchange.
It was a colossal, fossilized ribcage belonging to a beast that had died long before humanity learned to write. The curved, yellowed bones towered hundreds of feet into the bruised sky, acting as the structural pillars for a massive, sprawling coliseum.
Wrapped tightly around the ancient, dead bone were miles of thick black digital cables and blinding neon screens. Stock tickers. Numbers flashing in rapid, frantic red and green sequences, tracking the exact financial value of the blood spilling inside the pit.
It was a grotesque, perfect marriage of mythic death and high-frequency trading.
And buried somewhere inside that arena was a piece of my Queen’s soul.
The rusted hairpin in my pocket grew warm. It vibrated against my leg like a tuning fork struck against a bell, resonating with the battery powering the Warlord’s heart.
I felt the corners of my mouth twitch. It wasn’t a smile. It was a promise of absolute, systemic ruin.
I adjusted my ruined tie, ignoring the sweat gathering on the back of my neck.
"Let’s go spend some money."
